On Saturday, January 9, twelve people lost their homes to a fire.
The blaze began in the kitchen of a rear unit on the second floor of the Raleigh Gardens apartments located between Glenwood Avenue and Duraleigh Road.
Shomary Rodriguez, sophomore, was staying with her aunt when the fire happened.
“She lost everything but her clothes, and since the fire, she has been flipping from my house to the homes of her friends,” said Rodriguez.
Firefighters determined that unattended cooking caused an oven to explode, thus starting the fire.
“The guy right under my aunt started the fire, he was mentally handicapped, and I guess the flames scared him,” said Shomary Rodriguez, sophomore.
“Someone obviously left him alone and unsupervised, because he just stood there panicking as the blaze reached my aunt’s apartment through the wall and up through the roof,” she said.
Luckily, no one was injured in the fire but for those who lost their homes, starting over will be tough.
“The hardest part for my aunt is that she is a single mother raising her children,” said Rodriguez. “All this time, she had been working hard for next to nothing for everything she had, and now it’s all gone.”
